Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Testing Group-Level Differences in Political Decision-Making

政治学博士论文研究：测试政治决策中的群体差异

• 批准号: 0819591
• 负责人: John Sullivan
• 金额: $ 1.01万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-07-01 至 2009-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0819591&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Citizens entrust elected officials with the power to make important decisions. Elected officials are supposed to lead as well as to represent their constituents in part because direct democracy is impractical for a large country. What are the consequences of indirect representation? If ordinary citizens made policies, would their decision making processes and choices differ from elected officials' processes and choices? Through an innovative experimental design, this project tests the extent to which elected officials and everyday citizens differ in their decision-making. The contexts or situations of decision-making for elected officials and everyday citizens are distinct, but in general, their decision-making abilities should not differ. Thus, the question is whether elected officials and everyday citizens are equally affected in their decision-making by the same contexts. This project focuses on two contexts familiar to elected officials: accountability for one's decisions and situations with high stakes and consequences. The project tests the proposition that individuals who experience lower levels of anxiety in contexts of accountability and high stakes are best able to learn from new information. To this end, the project examines the effects of anxiety on the quality of decision-making among both elected officials and ordinary citizens. The main hypothesis is that elected officials' experience with decision-making to lead to lower average levels of experienced anxiety. Thus, elected officials' patterns of information-seeking and learning from information should be less affected by contexts of accountability and high stakes, as compared to everyday citizens' patterns of information search and learning in the same contexts. To test these hypotheses, the project uses a computerized information board, which describes a series of hypothetical public policy problems and lists potential options that could solve them. A total of 400 participants are sampled equally from two groups, everyday citizens sampled from the general adult populations of Minnesota and elected officials serving in Minnesota at the state and local level and are asked to role-play the part of an elected official during the decision scenarios. This study is the first research in political science to compare directly elected officials' and everyday citizens' political decision-making. An important debate revolves around the idea of whether elected officials are "trustees" who use insight and information to make decisions on our behalf or "delegates" who merely act as stand-ins for constituents. Either way, citizens implicitly trust elected officials to make decisions that are at least as good, if not better than what they themselves might do. Because we know little about the similarities and differences in individuals' political decision-making, we can only speculate what a more direct form of democracy would look like compared to our present system of indirect democracy. This project contributes to this important goal of determining the best way for citizens to have their preferences reflected in public policy.

公民委托民选官员作出重要决定的权力。选举产生的官员应该既代表选民又领导选民，部分原因是直接民主对一个大国来说是不切实际的。 间接代表的后果是什么？如果是普通公民制定政策，他们的决策过程和选择会与民选官员的决策过程和选择不同吗？通过创新的实验设计，该项目测试了民选官员和普通公民在决策方面的差异程度。 民选官员和普通公民的决策背景或情况是不同的，但一般来说，他们的决策能力不应有差异。 因此，问题是民选官员和普通公民在决策时是否同样受到同样背景的影响。 该项目侧重于民选官员熟悉的两种情况：对自己的决定负责和具有高利害关系和后果的情况。 该项目测试的命题是，在问责和高风险背景下经历较低焦虑水平的个人最有能力从新信息中学习。 为此，该项目研究了焦虑对民选官员和普通公民决策质量的影响。 主要假设是，民选官员的决策经验，以导致较低的平均水平的经验焦虑。 因此，与普通公民在同样情况下的信息搜索和学习模式相比，民选官员寻求信息和从信息中学习的模式应较少受到问责和高风险背景的影响。为了验证这些假设，该项目使用了一个计算机化的信息板，它描述了一系列假设的公共政策问题，并列出了可能解决这些问题的可能选项。 共有400名参与者从两个群体中平等地抽样，从明尼苏达州的一般成年人口抽样的日常公民和在明尼苏达州服务的当选官员在州和地方一级，并要求角色扮演的一部分，当选官员在决策方案。 本研究是政治学上第一个比较直选官员和普通公民政治决策的研究。 一个重要的辩论围绕着这样一个想法：当选官员是利用洞察力和信息代表我们做出决定的“受托人”，还是仅仅充当选民替身的“代表”。 无论哪种方式，公民都含蓄地相信民选官员做出的决定至少和他们自己可能做的一样好，如果不是更好的话。 由于我们对个人政治决策的相似性和差异性知之甚少，我们只能推测与我们目前的间接民主制度相比，更直接的民主形式会是什么样子。 该项目有助于实现这一重要目标，即确定公民在公共政策中反映其偏好的最佳方式。